Hi Everyone:
Some good things happened this week...baseball season started on Thursday, including a win for the Yanks in the chilly Bronx, and a win for the Mets in Miami.
But the week started on another tragic note. One that has become all too common here in America. Another school shooting, this one in Nashville.
Photo Credit: CBS Sunday Morning
NASHVILLE SCHOOL SHOOTING- 3 nine year old babies and 3 adult teachers were gunned down by a 28 year old former student at the school.
I decided a few school massacres ago not to mention the names of the vermin who commit these atrocities, but for some people felt it was necessary to mention that the shooter was a biological female who identified as male. To me that's irrelevant.
What is relevant that this animal was carrying three guns-an AR-15 rifle, an AR pistol and a handgun. At least two of the guns were purchased legally.
Back in 2020, I reluctantly joined Twitter, because Tim's school was posting a lot about his class which was graduating in the throes of the pandemic. I tried to be careful about who I was following, I kept it to friends, journalists I respected, and an occasional athlete.
Unfortunately some of the journos and jocks I follow also follow some of the lowlifes in politics. So some of their tweets end up on my feed.
Now, one of the people's who tweets I saw was Lauren Bloebert, and I only mention her because, gun nut and idiot that she normally is, her initial tweet only said that "my prayers are with beautiful children whose lives have been lost their families & the first responders who are dealing with this tragedy in Nashville"
Empty words coming from someone who take family pictures with her young kids holding automatic rifles? Sure. But as God as my witness, downright classy compared to some of the other shit these scumbags were posting. Many of them went right after the fact that the shooter was transgender.
Anything else. Always anything else than the fact that they were able to get an assault rifle. As easy as buying a can of soda.
And until something is done about THAT, the rest of the stuff is just noise. In the meantime, three more of our most important resource we have, our children were gunned down doing nothing more that going to school. Another heartbreaking, horrible day for our country.
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I'm going to hold off discussing Captain Orange's indictment till next week. I want to wait till he is formally charged and the indictment is unsealed. Both sides of the aisle are giving their $0.02, but there are people defending Orange )and attacking Alvin Bragg) without even knowing what the hell he is being charged with.
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Let's get to more fun stuff....
COLLEGE BASKETBALL: I'm not even going to get into the tournament. Let me put to you this way..If you had Florida Atlantic or San Diego State going to the Final Four, you either pulled those schools out of a hat, or you had a few glasses of personality when you were filling out your bracket. . I know my brackets weren't the only one that burned faster than the map of the Ponderosa at the beginning of Bonanza.
But I do want to mention that my beloved Red Storm of St. John's pried away Rick Pitino from the Iona Gaels a couple weeks ago,as predicted by the great Steven Butler in the Irish Echo a few years back,.
I had some high hopes for Mike Anderson when he took over the Storm from Chris Mullin 4 years ago, but he was unable to have any real success.
Pitino comes back to NYC 34 years after breaking my heart leaving the Knicks for Kentucky in the midst of their rebuild. I was happy to see he still had the magic touch at Iona that he had at Providence, Kentucky and Louisville. While he may hot have gotten the boys from New Roc to the Final Four like he did the aforemnationed programs, he seems confident he can bring winning basketball back to Queens.
And if Pitino can manage not to turn the Italian restaurants on Utopia Parkway into his personal brothel, St. John's may have a great chance to return to the glory days of the 80's. And college basketball can become relevant around here again.
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I meant to write about this a few weeks ago....
TV REVIEW: Special Forces-World's Toughest Test
I'm not really much of a reality show buff. I hate to admit that I got into the first season of Survivor back in 2000. It was one of the few things I enjoyed that summer. Back in 2004, 2005, Imus used to have Captain Orange on to preview that night's episode of the Apprentice and then the following day, Imus and Charles McCord would do a 5 minute sponsored review of it, and that was the extent of my interest in that show.
But this show on FOX caught my eye because one of the participants was one of my heroes, former Met Hall of Famer Mike Piazza. Just getting to root him on again was enough to get me to tune in.
As the name of the show suggests, 16 "celebrities" went to a remote training site in Jordan to see if they could survive 10 days of Special Forces training, under the supervision and orders of former Special Forces operatives.
In addition to Piazza, other athletes competing were former NBA All-Star Dwight Howard, former Pro Bowl receiver Danny Amendola, X-Games skier Gus Kentworthy, World Cup winner Carli Lloyd and Gold Medal Winning gymnast Nastia Liukin. There were three singers: Former Spice Girl Mel B (Scary Spice), Jamie-Lynn Spears (Brittney's little sister) and Montell Jordan (This is How We Do it) . There were four reality show vets, Kate Gosselin (Jon and Kate plus 8) Hannah Brown (The Bachelorette) Dr. Drew Pinsky and Kenya Moore (Real Housewives of Atlanta). Rounding out the 16 competitors were celebrity chef Tyler Florence, 7th Heaven star Beverly Mitchell and (I kid you not) Anthony "the Mooch" Scaramucci. If you want to binge watch this and don't want to know how it turns out, scroll down to below the stars.
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Kate Gosselin and Dr. Drew, got hurt on day one and were forced to drop out. Montell Jordan got hurt on day two and Tyler Florence waved the proverbial white flag.
In the beginning of episode 3, Jamie Lynn told Piazza she missed her kids too much and despite his pleading with her to stay, she quit. Scary Spice somehow snuck a pack of smokes into the camp, and though she didn't get busted for them, she quit shortly thereafter. Liukin quit on that episode as well.
Beverly Mitchell was barely keeping up and kept breaking down in tears. She finally cried uncle in episode 4.
Everybody made it through episode 5, but the Mooch was starting to really struggle. Whatever you think of him, at 58, he was the oldest one still on the show and the other trainees really started to rally around him. Mooch bowed out at the beginning of episode 6. Kenya Moore joined him shortly thereafter, despite her having passed many of tests. She had a trick knee that was acting up.
So through 6 episodes, my man was still going strong....well, not really. He wasn't passing many of the tests. Though the instructors had the authority to dismiss you from the competition, they generally didn't unless you were hurt. They would occasionally call the recruits into a meeting. A couple of times they called Dwight Howard in to give out to him about his attitude (which if I recall correctly, more than one of his basketball coaches had to do as well)
When they called Piazza in the first time, I swear I almost broke down myself. They asked him why he wanted to do this competition and he said that he had always admired the military. He also said that his father had been drafted for the Korean War and was buried with full military honors. He said that many times in his life he felt guilty that he hadn't served his country the way his father had. I can say I have had that exact same feeling myself...many times. I can also say I was at Shea the night Piazza hit that home run against the Braves, first game after 9/11. If Mike feels he owes America anything, I'll say he made a huge payment that night. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way.
They had a drill where the recruits had to go into a building filled with gas, find a medical bag, and find a way out. Piazza went in, had trouble finding the bag, and upon finding it, tried to get out the front door, which was now locked. He kept ramming it and ended up knocking himself out.
He never really recovered from that. He was talking about quitting at the end of that episode, but didn't. In the beginning of episode 8, he told the underwear clad Bachelorette Hannah Brown (not that I noticed) that he hadn't slept. He decided to pack in in right there. Carli Lloyd called him a warrior and he went and turned in his arm band.
At that point I pretty much stopped watching. I found out that in the same episode, Gus Kentworthy almost went into anaphylactic shock and was forced out. That left Howard, Amendola, Carli and Hannah.
The two male athletes quit in the final episode. They put headphones on each of the four that had a baby crying and the sound you heard when dialing into AOL back in the day over and over. This was too much for Amendola who begged out. (It reminded me of when the US Military used Nancy Sinatra's These Boots are Made for Walking to smoke out Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.)
The winners such as it was were Hannah Brown and Carli Lloyd. Look, Lloyd is a world class athlete, one of the best players on one of the great soccer teams ever assembled. Hannah Brown was Miss Alabama. Call me a cold hearted skeptic, but you can't convince me that they scripted it so that she'd be one of the last ones standing.
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So for that I don't recommend binge watching this one. It had it's moments, but I wouldn't waste my time again.
Both our baseball teams got off to good starts this week. The Mets took three out of four in Miami and the Yanks took 2 of 3 from the Giants. Mets home opener is Thursday.
And again, if you had UCONN vs San Diego State as your final, I hope you tipped your bartender.
Next Sunday is Easter, so I may not publish, but I also want to give my $0.02 about the Trump indictment, so maybe we'll do a Saturday Night Special. We shall see.
Happy Passover this week. (Wednesday evening)
Please Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
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